Secretive Swedish phone maker outs MS Phone

By
12.20.2002 :: 1:15PM EST

Wow. This is simultaneously pretty cool and pretty stupid, if you ask me. Swedish company Neonode announced a while back that is was working on a Microsoft-powered smartphone. The company has been very quiet, but now the cat's out of the bag. What Nenode has put together is the N1 Neonode. It measures 3.5 x 2 x .83 inches (88 x 52 x 21 mm) and weighs 3.3 ounces (93 g). Small isn't the only thing that's different. This smartphone is not going to use Microsoft's Smartphone software or Pocket PC Phone Edition. Instead, it will use Windows CE with a custom GUI built by Neonode. Second, where most of the new smartphones are opting to use number pads as input and skip out on touch-screens, this one uses one big touch-screen. It looks like a beautiful display, a 2.2″ with 18-bit 176×220 TFT. And the kicker is the battery. Tiny devices like this usually disappoint here, but not the N1 Neonode. It sports an 1100 mAh battery that promises 250 hours standby, four hours talk-time, or 10 hours use without making calls. Here's why I said it's kind of stupid. One: dialing via touch-screen is not cool. If you have a PDA-centric device that is also a phone, like the XDA, you can put up with that. The Neonode, though, is more phone than PDA. Two: phones get a lot of wear and tear. You use a phone more often than you use a PDA if you're like most people. You press it to your face, you drop it into your cup holder in your car while it's charging. Touch screens are too sensitive to take that sort of beating. I think that's probably the main reason other smartphone vendors (MS and Symbian licensees) are avoiding touch-screens. Still, this looks like a nice device, if they can come up with a good hard case that keeps the phone usable but protected. infoSync reports: “New Windows smartphone from Neonode.” As always, the site has a nice high-res image, too.

USER COMMENTS 9 comment(s)

touch screen(1:52pm EST Fri Dec 20 2002)if they can make the touch screen sensitive enough for use with my fat thumbs then I'll go for it. – by Mr. Wizard